


no need to say goodbye

by avioletqueen



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Not Beta Read, Open Ending, Post - "Goodbye for the Summer", Swearing, background Jack/Bitty - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 16:19:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6122245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avioletqueen/pseuds/avioletqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She snorts, leaning into his touch. “Yeah, definitely,” she says. But she doesn’t say “that’s funny”, or “good try”, so the world keeps turning and Shitty keeps hoping."</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>Shitty and Lardo escape the Knight Family Dinner, if only briefly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no need to say goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> title from "the call" - regina spektor

It’s a blessing, really, that restaurants have storage closets, and that employees sometimes don’t lock those closets, and that Lardo somehow implicitly knows that he wants her to follow his lead when he taps her a couple times on the thigh before rising to say that he needs to visit the restroom real fast. 

“Welcome, esteemed guest, to Dinner 2.0,” Shitty says in a grand whisper, ushering her into the small space before closing the door behind them. It’s pretty spacious as far as closets go, big enough for him to sit on the cement floor and pat the ground next to him. “Well, I guess it’s 1.5, since it’s technically happening in the middle of the fucking awful Dinner 1.0.” 

“Tell me about it. You owe me big-time, Shits,” Lardo says, but she’s got a smile on her face as she takes a seat next to him. He’s envious that she’s short enough to stretch her legs out, his own curled up tight to his chest. “I can’t believe your family is bougie enough that I’m asking this, but how many courses left?” 

Shitty groans, and Lardo is quick to shush him, glancing warily at the door. “Like, two? Three? I don’t know. All I know is that the entire Knight side of this family is a bag of dicks.”

“I’m just saying - we’d better be getting that fancy dessert you promised me. Your aunt just talked my ear off about her new paleo-vegan-south-beach diet for thirty minutes, and now I’m starving for something sugary.” Lardo sighs, shifting to press herself comfortably against Shitty’s side. “How do you manage to get me to do these kinds of things sober?”

“It’s cause you love me, Lardo.” Shitty drapes an arm over her shoulder, pointing at her chest. “Right there. Motherfucking assloads of passionate, desperate love for me.” 

She snorts, leaning into his touch. “Yeah, definitely,” she says. But she doesn’t say “that’s funny”, or “good try”, so the world keeps turning and Shitty keeps hoping. 

They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes, Shitty resting his cheek against her hair, Lardo tracing patterns in her jeans, but they’re interrupted by both of their phones vibrating almost simultaneously. 

“What the fuck?” Shitty mutters to himself as he pulls his cell out of his pocket, unlocking it immediately when he sees the notification from Jack. Lardo fishes out her own from her back pocket, and it takes them about the same time to read the texts. 

_bittle and i are dating. we wanted you to know._

“Holy fuck,” Lardo breathes before she can speak, a smile coming over her face as she looks up at Shitty with bright eyes. Turning her phone to him, she stutters out, “Bitty just-- do you see--?”

“Fuck yeah, Jack just--?” But he’s fumbling for his words too, so he shows her the text on his screen, as he reads the emoji-filled message that Bitty sent Lardo, containing the same exact news.

“No way.”

“Brah.” 

“Shits.”

“I know.”

Words escape them, and they break out into excited laughter instead, pulling each other into a brief tight hug before Lardo pulls back and holds up her phone. “We have to take a congrats selfie for them. C’mon. You know we have to.”

So they spend their time taking outrageous pictures of themselves, pulling faces and adding stickers before excitedly texting their friends back. The scowls aimed in Shitty’s direction when they come back to their seats ten minutes later? Totally worth it.

***

It’s late when they get back to the Haus, and for once, the place is completely quiet. Lardo’s the last to leave, doing a last check of her things before catching a ride with one of her art friends.

“Fucking sucks that I couldn’t take you home, but I figured you probably wouldn’t want to be stuck in a car with my shitty family anyway,” Shitty says, lingering in front of the door to his old room. 

“Find better adjectives, brah. Shitty’s the only thing I like about your family.” Lardo says it as casually as she can manage, but the fact that he can hear that she’s trying is bad news. 

“Hey, Lardo?” He hesitates. Almost reaches out for her, then curls his fingers into a fist and pulls back. “Have… you’re gonna have a fucking amazing summer, okay? And you’re going to be the best, ballsiest senior in the house when you come back.” He strives to sound boisterous, peppy as always, because nothing’s wrong. He wouldn’t say everything’s right, but nothing’s wrong.

Lardo takes a deep breath, and there’s a shudder in it that Shitty doesn’t like. “I’m gonna…” she starts, then bites her lip, cutting herself off.

“Bro,” he says quietly, looking down at her even though she’s staring pointedly at their feet. “I thought we agreed we weren’t doing this.” They’d cried on each other already, often enough that Lardo had made him swear that they wouldn’t talk about how they were parting ways on Graduation Day itself. 

“Let me finish, god,” she says, laughing shakily as she pokes him in the ribs. Her hand falls almost naturally from there to catch at his hand, her fingers intertwining with his. “I’m just gonna miss your flow. That’s all.”

He chuckles too, way more softly than usual, and squeezes her hand tight. “I’m growing it back ‘til it’s ranker than yours. All the Harvard law pricks can suck my dick. No worries, right?”

“Right.” There’s still something left, though. They aren’t done. Shitty can sense it, clear as day, because he fucking knows Lardo, knows her better than he knows himself sometimes. 

Yet somehow, he doesn’t expect her to tug on his hand, pulling him down as she rocks up on her toes to press her lips to the corner of his. 

Shitty doesn’t even have time to register what’s happened before Lardo is talking again, smooth as ever. “You’d better Skype me every day. No excuses.”

He blinks for a couple seconds, then smiles wider than he ever thought possible. “You’d better call me over when you need me to pose for your art.”

“Oh yeah? You’d better come over and eat gummy bears with me when I’m craving them.”

“You already know that you’d better eat all the gross pink ones.” 

Lardo is grinning by now, and she pushes at his chest lightly. “Jesus, Shits, you’d better go back to your stupid family before they kill you for taking five years to drop me off.” But she’s laughing as she says it, and Shitty feels better about pulling her into a hug.

“You call me, okay, dude? I’ll pick up whenever. Fuck Harvard Law. Alright?” He pulls back then, giving her hand one final squeeze before heading for the stairs. 

“Alright. You have a good summer, Shits.” She smiles, then turns to go into her new room as he walks down the stairs, leaves the Haus for the last time as a Samwell student. 

His asshole of a dad is blaring the horn, waiting for him in the driveway, and Shitty rakes a hand through his hair before heading towards the car, sliding into the passenger seat. His dad doesn’t say anything, just making a face as he backs the car out. 

“Hey, Shitty!” 

Shitty jumps, frowning before realizing what’s happening and rolling down the window. Lardo waves at him from his old-- her new window, and he waves back, without regard for the scoff his father gives from the seat next to him. 

“You still owe me!” she yells down at him, and the grin that spreads can only be called shit-eating.

“I’ll tell you my first name sometime, promise!” he roars back, cupping his hands around his mouth so that the words carry before the car turns a corner, and the Haus shifts out of view.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me at [lindbecks.tumblr.com](lindbecks.tumblr.com) for more crying about these two, zimbits, and omgcp in general.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Podfic - no need to say goodbye](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7344994) by [bienenalster (pinkspider)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkspider/pseuds/bienenalster)




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